


And My Heart Breaks Just A Little Bit

by jaeseoksoo



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen, post-Reichenbach musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-08
Updated: 2012-02-08
Packaged: 2017-10-30 19:32:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaeseoksoo/pseuds/jaeseoksoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the dark of night, he murmurs my name like a mantra.  He shares with me things he never brings up while we sip tea like old men in the sitting room during warm afternoons.  Nothing is to be done and sleep doesn’t easily come so I let him take me through his thoughts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And My Heart Breaks Just A Little Bit

**Author's Note:**

> written for reapersun (who doesn't know I exist which is fine)

In the dark of night, he murmurs my name like a mantra.  He shares with me things he never brings up while we sip tea like old men in the sitting room during warm afternoons.  Nothing is to be done and sleep doesn’t easily come so I let him take me through his thoughts.

He starts with life.  He says life is like a nuisance, a disease encumbering his daily pace, dragging him down, too heavy for him to lift.  Life without cases is like cancer reaching the final stage.  Sometimes he fights it (he loses) and sometimes it puts him into complete desolation (he surrenders).  It putrefies his insides, painful and intolerable and the damage it leaves in its wake is an unholy sight. It gives him reason to put bullets on walls and blood on harpoons.   

He tells me about death in secret whispers like a lover waiting to frolic with him in its sinuous yet rotting arms.  It is a guest he admits he is too eager to welcome sometimes and I chastise him for this.  He continues and tells me about its promise of afterlife and how it is a mystery he is eager to wrap his long fingers around and perhaps even shape to his own liking.  It seduces him constantly with permanent respite and there are times he is thoroughly enamored with the idea that he runs off unbridled to alleys and warehouses where he is absolutely convinced he will find it lurking, ready to spring on him its happy fatal surprise.  And it reminds me how many times I often have to keep the surprise from getting out of the box.

He tells me about lies and how they remind him of music, beautiful and complex, different every time with its numerous crescendos and staccatos and only as good as the last time they are performed in front of an eager audience.  I think of two particular women when he tells me this and I secretly smile.  He becomes a composer of words and expressions and often becomes vain about his creations.  He likes to watch how they attract unsuspecting people to him like baiting fish to be lured inside a net.  He spins them on the palm of his hand and he watches them dance in belief and disbelief, in ecstasy and despair.  The symphony he creates is exotic and he makes you sway against your own will until it is over and sometimes in the end you never realize you get played. 

He surprises me when he sings of dreams, distant and irrelevant and how they pale in comparison to our waking hours, running and chasing down criminals like we are on high, always basking in the aftermath of a good chase or a bad one during unlucky days.   He tells me of piracy, of ships and treasure maps that don’t really have red Xs on them and these make me laugh.  He lets me laugh at his dreams and he laughs with me and in the end, I feel just a little more special.

He speaks of stars and their uneventful lives.  He tells me how he appreciates their muted beauty and their organized chaos stretching for miles against inky obsidian skies.  He sets off to wax poetic unintentionally when he tells me inane stories of stars and it makes me wonder how these trivial yet beautiful ideas manage to retain their tiny spaces in the precious bytes of his intellectual hard drive.  He seems to be at peace when he rolls mysterious constellations on his tongue (Camelopardalis, Horologium, Vulpecula) and I listen in awe to his rich voice and try to fight the pleasure of contentment as his baritone lulls me to sleep.  He tugs at my sleeve and he comprehends from my gaze how I would like him to please, yes, do continue.

He tries to speak of his parents with detachment and his shoulders stiffen. I touch his hand and he goes off instead in a broken tangent about mannerisms and routines, how mine usually fascinates him.  He says observing me takes out most of the tediousness of sluggish days.  He fervently ticks my mannerisms off one by one and he doesn’t get offended when I interrupt him to scoff at the absurdity of some of his observations.  He lets me correct him and I see tiny wrinkles between his eyebrows for that.  It reminds me of little soldiers camping in a straight line, marring his otherwise perfect brow.  He ponders a moment longer and he makes me see a small child trying to decipher something he could not totally understand and my heart breaks a little bit for that.

For a while I listen to him and I don’t remember when I fall asleep, his body a comforting presence beside me, radiating warmth during a cold winter night.  I keep his stories safe inside dozen memory bubbles as I doze off, his words and phrases percolating in my mind under the tender haze of sleep.  I keep them there until I wake up and face the truth where I am alone and there isn’t really a body snuggled beside me. There hasn’t been one for three years now. 

But this morning I open my eyes and he is beside me.  He stares back and I feel painful tears sting my eyes.  They trickle down my face and I let them flow freely.  I do not dare break the silence so I just lay there and I watch him.  His lips turn up in the corners and he smiles that smile I believe he puts on only for me.  It is a smile like the sun, blazing and bright, blinding and encompassing.  I wait until he reaches out to me.  He does and I reach out in return, hopeful, but I shiver and close my eyes in dismay because like all those other hopeful mornings only cold winter wind caresses my cheek.  I cry for he still isn't back and I think my heart breaks just a little bit more for that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This work is completely unbeta'd and un-britpicked.


End file.
